The problem is that supporters of new gun restrictions have traditionally approached the issue of gun violence as a political problem to be answered by changing laws. Instead, we need to start looking at guns as a public health problem to be answered by changing minds and habits. Until we change how we frame the debate through our messaging and strategy, the landscape for common-sense gun laws will only become increasingly hostile.

Read the whole thing if you want to know what the other side is thinking.

3 Responses to “Changing the Gun Control Debate”

The anti-gun crowd has used the public health approach numerous times. They were aided by the CDC with its falsified homicide numbers: it called suicides by gun homicides. The CDC labeled everyone under 19 who was shot a child. It turns out that the vast majority of the deaths and injuries occurred among 16 to 18-year-old gangbangers. If you eliminate gangs fighting gangs, child deaths and injuries were low. The CDC’s numbers included injuries or deaths due to self-defense, including those of police officers. Aren’t you glad that you, as a taxpayer, fund the CDC and FBI that try to remove your right to self-defense?

Of course, the data out of Chicago and NYC, and the CDC’s own numbers, make clear that if there *is* a “public health” problem with firearm-related criminal homicide and assault it is primarily located within very distinct groups of loosely associated individuals in a very limited number of neighborhoods in cities, most of which are run by Progressives and have very strict gun control compared to the states in which they are located.

What *isn’t* a “public health” problem, and has no direct, documentable correspondence to the above problem, is lawful gun access, ownership, and carry even under the loosest of regulatory regimes.

Forget guns and address the subculture of violence based in large part on an utterly asinine and atavistic “honor-based society” understanding of “respect” and “disrespect.”

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Started in October of 2002, Alphecca is an occasional blog of OPINIONS by a libertarian, gay gun-nut living in Vermont. Book reviews, politics, gun stuff, other stuff; it’s all here. Your opinions about my opinions are welcome in the comments and as I always say, thank’s for stopping by.